Pennies from heaven

by Russell Sanjek

The technological and economic revolutions of the twentieth century have transformed the music business many times over. Pennies from Heaven is the definitive account of those transformations, from Thomas Edison's cylinders to Digital Audio Tape, from the rise and fall of vaudeville to the advent of the huge entertainment conglomerates, from the sale of sheet music to the marketing of music videos, from house organists for silent movies to soundtracks which sell in the tens of millions. Along the way, the book describes the workings of the performing rights organizations ASCAP and BMI; the demise of Hollywood's dominance of popular music after World War II; the growth of new genres, from rhythm-and-blues to rap and metal; the transformation of music radio from AM to FM; the establishment of "top 40" and the methods used to collect the necessary data; the rise of rock and its multi-billion-dollar business; the changes in copyright law; the strange career of the FCC; and trends to watch